Sharon Stone’s Quake Comment Causes Uproar in China

Posted on May 29, 2008

Chinese moviegoers aren’t going to rush to see any more Sharon Stone flicks (if they ever did), and, as execs at Christian Dior realized, they won’t be in a hurry to buy products she promotes after she speculated at Cannes last week about the possibility that the devastating earthquake in China on May 12 represented a form of karmic retribution for the Chinese government’s treatment of Tibetans.

The actress apologized Thursday for her “erroneous words and deeds,” but her words apparently did little to rectify the situation, and Dior China pulled ads featuring Stone the same day.

AP via Breitbart.com:

Stone—perhaps best known for her starring role in “Basic Instinct”—sparked the controversy last week, which has angered people across China and led to pledges by some cinemas here to boycott her films.

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” Stone said, according to footage widely available on YouTube.

“And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma—when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

The remarks sparked an uproar in China, where people are in no hurry to forgive her, according to a survey published on the popular web portal www.qq.com.